Over the past year, as the conspiracy theorists have come together under one big apocalyptic tent—the “stop the steal” election truthers, the anti-vaxers, the anti-maskers—we have seen organized campaigns of harassment, threats of violence, attempts to harm members of school administrations, and physical altercations at school board meetings when masks are mandated.

Remember that QAnon is a partisan murder apocalypse fantasy—because that affects everything else. Trump’s own spread of COVID-19 conspiracies and refusal to engage in basic public health measures certainly contributed to the partisan response to the pandemic, but QAnon’s adoption of COVID-19 conspiracies has spread it into the new year and made it politically important in a number of red states. We are still seeing large rallies against the federal government. But at the same time, QAnon activists are becoming ever more local in their politics. Whatever narratives were spun about suburbs as a locus of anti-Trump sentiment, they are also the place where anti-maskers and QAnon have merged to attack school boards and public health measures.